Tichu

Tichu is a partnership card game designed by the folks at the Swiss game
company
Fata Morgana. Decks are
produced by both Fata Morgana and Abacus Spiele and differ mainly in the color
of the card backs. The Abacus Spiel box also contains a second deck of cards
but since this doesn't include the four special cards, it is not helpful for
play of the basic game.

The deck is a 56 card deck which is basically just like a regular 52 card
deck plus 4 special cards (Dragon, Phoenix, Dog and 1/Sparrow/Mah Jong). The
suits are also changed to Jade (Green), Sword (Black), Pagoda (Blue) and
Star (Red).

The game is a partnership game where each player's primary objective is to get
rid of all of his cards and 'tricks' are played in a
'climbing' style similar
to that used in
Zheng Shangyou, Zheng Fen, Big Two, The Great
Dalmutti, Frank's Zoo and Asshole.

This game has become extremely popular with my group and others and I highly
recommend you give it a try if you are interested in partnership card games.
It is quite different from any others I have played. To quote Stuart
Daggar's review in Counter Magazine,
"Tichu is much more of a heavyweight game than Zoff im Zoo, Karriere Poker
and so on. They are all either party games or end of evening fillers. This is
the sort of game that will keep card players happy for a couple of hours or
more. There is much more to the tactics and hand management than there is in
the simpler games and the scope for partnership cooperation is real."

Tichu Reference Card - Microsoft Word
format player aid (also available as a
PDF file). It is intended that this
be printed on a full-sheet of label paper, cut out, and then attached
to the front and back of extra cards you have. Each print makes two
player aid cards. The Abacus Spiele deck comes with a version of
this in German.